steampunk heart
Uncategorized

Suffering of Palestinians receives little attention from either candidate

While foreign policy and the Middle East were referenced numerous times during the debate, the suffering of the Palestinians and the toll of Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza received little mention, despite growing calls for the US to cut off military assistance to Israel.

  • While hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper mentioned that “thousands” of Palestinians had been killed, the onset of famine conditions in Gaza due to Israel’s persistent blockage of aid and the mass destruction of Gaza went unnoted by the candidates. Biden falsely claimed that every party but Hamas has agreed to his ceasefire proposal.

  • Trump said Biden has become “like a Palestinian” and retorted that Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza, where more than 90 percent of the population has been displaced and more than 37,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

  • “That comment was very blatantly racist,” Ayah Ziyadeh, director of American Muslims for Palestine, told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.

  • “Calling Biden a ‘bad Palestinian’ and using Palestinian as a slur shows the depths of racism that exists here.”

Source: Al Jazeera

Trump offers his final comments

  • In his final two minutes, Trump gave a closing argument that accused Biden of allowing for war to break out across the world and immigration to run amok.

“Like so many politicians, this man is just a complainer,” Trump said of Biden. “All he does is make our country unsafe, by allowing millions and millions of people to pour in.”

  • Of Israel’s war in Gaza, Trump said: “It should have never happened.”

  • Of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he repeated a similar sentiment: “Ukraine should have never happened.”

  • “For three and a half years, we’ve been living in hell,” Trump continued, articulating a grim view of the status quo.

  • “This is a hundred times Charlottesville, a thousand times Charlottesville,” he said, referring to the white supremacist rally that unfolded in 2017, under his leadership.

  • “We’re in a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing any more. We’re going to make it great again.”

Source: Al Jazeera

Biden says country has made ‘significant progress’ in closing remarks

  • Biden has said that the country has made “significant progress” on issues such as taxation and healthcare access after the “debacle” of Trump’s time in office, and he pledged to continue bringing down inflation.

  • He also said that Trump’s proposal to increase tariffs by 10 percent would amount to a “tax” on everyday people and that the Republicans would roil Biden’s efforts to increase the ability of Medicare to negotiate the price of some drugs for seniors.

Source: Al Jazeera

Trump repeats falsehoods but Biden struggles with performance

While Donald Trump doubled down on false claims about everything from immigration to his loss in the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s performance could fuel concerns about his age and competency for office.

  • “Joe Biden called out Donald Trump on his lies, on his falsehoods, on his exaggerations, on things that simply are not true, but Donald Trump looked as if he was in command,” Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher reported from outside of the debate venue in Atlanta, Georgia.

  • “Many of the things we’ve heard from Donald Trump, we can prove are false. He repeated a lot of the things he uses in his speeches during his rallies. But the simple fact is he looked in command. For Joe Biden, he simply didn’t finish thoughts. He looked confused at certain points, and this was a bad night for him.”

Source: Al Jazeera